This is an idea that has it’s origins through attending EdTechChat. Through consulting with various stakeholders and exploring this idea, three educators will be going to ISTE in Philadelphia at the end of the month.

While this idea does have the potential to be a success, this success is by no means guaranteed and a little bit of sales hustle may help during this year’s conference.

This post includes 5 ways educators could put social proof to work to demonstrate the level of demand there is for the idea.

Obviously if the level of demand isn’t there then idea won’t thrive anyway, but the ideas below may help to “arrange group conditions to allow the principle of social proof to work maximally in favour” of Get2ISTE

This post is a summary of this Get2ISTE post, which provides more background and goes into more detail around the rationale for the ideas below.

Proof of Concept

Suppliers already support educators to get to conferences, and educators evangelise on behalf of these suppliers.

This survey could help demonstrate the extent that suppliers already help educators with conference expenses

2. Word of Mouth ReferralsThe three people going to ISTE may well be proponents of Get2ISTE and could evangelise about the concept to delegates, vendors and event organisers.

As ISTE will have a high concentration of educators who are early adopters, there is a danger that demand for crowd funding will out strip supply if vendors can’t be engaged and convinced of the merit behind the idea.

Some suggestions to put “Social Proof” to work at the event might include

3. Social Media

Educators who are supportive of the idea encourage their followers to show their support and enthusiasm for Get2ISTE

Educators could also @Mention suppliers they are proponents of and/or let them know that they were happy to evangelise on their behalf at ISTE 2016 (Chances are that many educators will be doing this anyway)

Obviously, anyone who opens a Get2ISTE account could let their followers know that they have opened an account.

4. In Real LifeT-Shirts can be a powerful way of putting “social proof” to work and give a visual demonstration of the level of support for an idea.

If people open a Get2ISTE 2016 account before or during the conference they could get a T-Shirt printed off with a message along the lines of

“Ask how you can help me Get2ISTE 2016”

If there isn’t time to get T-shirts made up, then some stickers or badges may have the same impact.

5. Post ConferenceSomething that all these ideas have in common is that if enough educators get involved some “early majority” suppliers may be more likely to get involved, something that has not happened to date.

If early majority suppliers get involved, this may see the organisers include questions like “Would you like to contribute 100% to our Get2ISTE cause?”

Comments like this on the organisers exhibition booking forms might see the “late majority” get involved.

500 Exhibitors contributing $100 to Get2ISTE would be $50,000. Based on the amounts for this years’ causes this would see 25–71 #NotatISTE educators making it to Denver in 2016.

There are lots of ways to develop this idea further, but these ideas would be dependent on getting the necessary buy in from all stakeholders.

I hope the ideas above prove helpful in order to achieve this.

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